CHAPTER EIGHT

Dawn did not come gently.

It clawed its way over the jagged mountains, bleeding pale gold across a sky still choked with smoke from the burning palace. The great hall lay in ruins: tables overturned, banners shredded, bodies strewn like broken dolls in congealing pools of blood and starlight. Shards of mirror glittered everywhere, each fragment reflecting a different version of the new queen.

Elara stood on the dais where Cassius had died.

His body lay at her feet, already cooling, the star-iron dagger still buried to the hilt in his chest. The bonding mark on her throat no longer glowed silver. It burned now—black veins spreading from the bite like frost across glass, pulsing in time with the beast’s heartbeat inside her.

She felt it fully awake.

Not raging. Not devouring.

Waiting.

Watching through her eyes.

The surviving court knelt in ragged semicircles: Lycan lords with fur matted in blood, vampire envoys pale as bone, guards frozen between loyalty and terror. No one spoke. No one dared breathe too loudly.

Elara lifted her gaze to them.

Her voice, when it came, was hers and not hers—layered with echoes of ancient night.

“Rise.”

They rose slowly, as though invisible chains had been cut.

Captain Thorne stepped forward first, sword still drawn but lowered. His eyes flicked to Cassius’s corpse, then back to her.

“Your Majesty,” he said, voice rough. “The king—”

“Is dead,” she finished. “By my hand. Let there be no confusion.”

A ripple went through the crowd. Some looked ready to bolt. Others looked ready to fight.

Thorne’s jaw worked. “The prophecy—”

“The prophecy has been fulfilled,” she said. “The beast is awake. The true mate’s heart was offered.” She nudged Cassius’s body with one bare foot. “Behold the sacrifice.”

Whispers erupted.

Not all believed. Some had seen Seraphine’s body crumple empty. Some had felt the bond snap and re-form around the wrong soul.

But belief was a luxury. Survival was not.

One by one, they knelt again.

This time, to her.

Elara felt the beast stir with satisfaction.

Good, it murmured inside her skull. They learn quickly.

She turned from the hall, walked through the shattered doors into the courtyard beyond. The air was thick with ash. Parts of the palace burned unchecked—towers collapsed, roofs caved. Screams echoed from distant wings where servants and lesser nobles fled or fought or hid.

She did not stop them.

Let the old order burn.

At the center of the courtyard stood the ancient coronation stone: a slab of black basalt veined with silver, stained by centuries of royal blood. Cassius had planned to crown her here in twenty-one nights, after the sacrifice, beneath the final moon.

She would not wait.

Elara climbed the steps.

The beast surged forward, lending her strength. She raised her arms.

From the ruins, shadows detached themselves—tendrils of star-speckled night, coiling like smoke. They wove around her, lifting the fallen crown from where it had rolled beside Cassius’s body.

The crown of the Lycan kings: silver wolf fangs interlaced with vampire thorns, centered by a single black diamond said to hold a drop of the god-beast’s original blood.

It settled onto her brow, heavy as fate.

Power flooded her.

Not just strength. Vision.

She saw the kingdom in fragments: border armies mobilizing in confusion, vampire queens receiving frantic missives from their envoys, feral wolves in the north howling at the sudden shift in the moon’s song. She saw the starving empire to the east stirring, scenting weakness.

And deeper—far deeper—she saw the beast’s true hunger.

Not for blood.

For birth.

The heir of shadow and starlight.

The child that had never been conceived.

Yet.

Elara’s hand drifted to her stomach.

The beast whispered, We have time now. The vessel is strong. The world will kneel, and we will fill it.

She closed her eyes.

When she opened them, Thorne had followed her into the courtyard, flanked by a dozen guards. Behind them, the surviving nobles gathered.

He stopped at the base of the stone.

“What are your orders, my queen?”

The title sounded strange in his mouth. Testing.

She regarded him.

“Three things,” she said.

“First: send riders to every corner of the kingdom. Let it be known that Cassius Blackthorn fell defending his queen from treachery. That the beast awoke to protect its true vessel. That I am crowned by its will.”

Thorne’s eyes narrowed, but he nodded.

“Second: open the granaries and blood vaults. Feed the people. Let them see mercy before they see strength.”

A murmur of surprise. Cassius had hoarded ruthlessly.

“Third,” she said softly, “find me the midwife who served the old queens. The one who knows the forbidden rites.”

Thorne hesitated. “The child—”

“Is coming,” she lied smoothly. “Whether the moon wills it or not.”

He bowed and withdrew to carry out her commands.

Alone again, Elara turned her face to the rising sun.

It hurt to look at.

The beast recoiled from its light.

She smiled.

Good. Let it learn limits.

But even as she thought it, doubt flickered.

Because something else had begun.

A pulling.

Not the beast.

Something older.

Deeper.

From the east.

The vampire empire.

Her mother’s voice—Queen Isolde Valcour—whispered across impossible distance, carried on blood magic.

Daughter. What have you done?

Elara did not answer.

Not yet.

Instead, she walked back into the palace, through halls of ruin and kneeling subjects, until she reached the queen’s solar.

The mirrors here had not shattered.

They bled steadily, rivers of crimson running down the glass to pool on the floor.

In the largest one, a figure stood on the other side.

Not a reflection.

Seraphine.

Pale. Translucent. Eyes burning with undimmed rage.

You stole my body, she accused. Then you let it die empty.

Elara stepped closer.

“I gave you a choice.”

You gave me death.

“No,” Elara said. “I gave you freedom from the prophecy. Your soul is unbound now. You can pass on.”

Seraphine’s ghost laughed—sharp as breaking glass.

I am bound to the veil you cracked. To the mirrors. To you.

She pressed a hand to the inside of the glass.

It rippled like water.

When I find a way out, I will wear your face again. And I will finish what we started.

Elara touched the glass opposite her palm.

Cold.

“Then I’d better make sure you never get the chance.”

She drew the star-iron dagger—still stained with Cassius’s blood—and drove it into the mirror.

The glass screamed.

Seraphine’s image shattered into a thousand silent shards.

But as they fell, each shard whispered the same word:

Soon.

Elara left the solar.

In the royal bedchamber, she found what she had expected.

A single black rose on the pillow.

No note.

It did not need one.

The vampire empire was coming.

They believed their princess murdered, their alliance broken, their blood-right stolen.

War.

She picked up the rose.

Thorns pierced her palm.

Blood welled—black now, flecked with starlight.

The beast purred approval.

Let them come, it said. We will drink them all.

Elara stared out the window at the burning kingdom.

For the first time since waking in borrowed skin, she felt something like fear.

Not of war.

Not of ghosts.

But of the thing growing inside her—not a child, not yet, but the possibility.

The beast wanted an heir.

And vessels, even strong ones, eventually broke under the weight of gods.

Night fell early, choked by smoke.

Elara stood on the highest balcony, crown still on her brow, watching her new world burn and rebuild itself in the same breath.

Below, armies began to gather—loyal packs answering the call, vampire defectors slipping across borders to swear fealty to the queen who had killed their ancient enemy.

Above, the stars wheeled closer, as though listening.

And somewhere in the shattered mirrors, something watched.

Waiting.

Learning her weaknesses.

Planning.

Elara touched the black veins spreading from the bonding mark.

They had reached her heart now.

Soon, they would reach everything.

She whispered into the dark, not sure who she was addressing—the beast, the ghost, or herself.

“Twenty-one nights,” she said. “That’s all I have left before it wants more than blood.”

The wind carried her words away.

But something answered.

A howl from the north.

A scream from the east.

And beneath her feet, deep in the roots of the palace, the empty beast chamber rumbled once.

As though remembering the taste of a heart it had been denied.

Elara closed her eyes.

The game was not over.

It had only just begun.

And the next move belonged to the dead.